


Give Me Your Hands, If We Be Friends

by amycarey



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 18:11:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2631377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amycarey/pseuds/amycarey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina Mills is being forced to take a stupid, totally pointless Introduction to Shakespeare course in her final semester. Emma Swan is the sign language interpreter for the class. Regina falls in lust with Emma's hands. And the rest of her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give Me Your Hands, If We Be Friends

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the following college AU prompt: "You’re the sign language interpreter for my Deaf classmate and I’m super distracted by you" - from Starshone (who doesn't even go here but unwittingly inspired this). It kind of veered off course somewhere in the middle.
> 
> Title taken from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' because it would really irritate Regina.

Regina sighs as she slides into the seat three rows from the front and to the side in the Introduction to Shakespeare course her adviser’s making her take. She’s been putting off completing her pre-twentieth century requirement for far too long and now she’s in her final semester and she can’t graduate without it. This hideous Shakespeare course is the only one available and she knows it all already – she took a more complex course last semester, which, because the English department is a bureaucratic nightmare, apparently doesn’t count.

 

The professor’s some nervous guy called Dr Hopper who’s fiddling with his power point presentation down the front. Regina glares at him because, although it’s not his fault she has to be here, it’s definitely his fault that attendance is worth ten percent of the course grade. He doesn’t notice, too busy adjusting his glasses, but the glaring does make her feel slightly better.

 

It’s now two minutes after the lecture was due to start and she’s furious at the waste of her time. There’s a couple of student-aged people standing beside Dr Hopper who Regina assumes are teaching assistants. She sneers inwardly (or perhaps not so inwardly since she feels her upper lip curl) at the thought that this bumbling man thinking he is important enough for two teaching assistants.

 

He coughs into the microphone at the lectern and she turns her attention to the front. One of the assistants – the good looking, dark haired one with the stubble – has sat down but the other – female, blonde – still stands beside Dr Hopper. “This class will be accompanied by sign language interpreters,” Dr Hopper says, as he welcomes everyone, and Regina looks at the woman to his right and sees that she’s signing along with what Dr Hopper is saying.

 

Regina doesn’t understand sign language. She’s never known anyone who was deaf and she’s never liked people enough in general to put any extra effort into communicating with them. It’s not like anyone put much effort into communicating with Papi, whose English had been broken and shaky until his death. Her mother used to call her misanthropic, back when she actually spoke to her mother.

 

“I’ll begin with the syllabus,” Dr Hopper says and the outline is handed around. ‘Macbeth’, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, ‘Richard III’ and, more unusually, ‘Measure for Measure’. She owns them all; Papi thought Shakespeare was next to the Bible andGabriel García Márquez, even though he didn’t understand it, and had bought her a complete set of his plays.

 

“Now,” Dr Hopper continues. “We’ll start with an introduction to the time in which Shakespeare wrote.” She sighs. This is going to be a long semester.  

 

Or perhaps not because she takes a proper look at the sign language interpreter and feels a strange fluttering the pit of her stomach that Marian keeps telling her means she finds someone attractive – not that she’s hungry, as she so often assumes and leaves parties to find pasta or ice cream. The girl is tall and scruffy and has this long blonde hair that falls down her back in curls fit for a princess (and if Regina feels a twinge of envy because when she was a little girl she dreamed of hair like Sleeping Beauty’s or Rapunzel’s, well, she’s a grown woman now and has learned to appreciate her quite frankly pretty amazing appearance and it’s not her fault that the media glorifies blonde, white girls).

 

*

 

After class, she visits her advisor. “I can’t stay in this class,” she says. “It’s making me depressed.”

 

Gold raises an eyebrow. “How so, dearie?” He’s a Scottish import at the University of Storybrooke, and a friend of her mother’s and she kind of loathes him but she also cut a deal with him to get her out of a math requirement so she has to toe the line occasionally.

 

“Everyone’s so stupid,” she says, sitting down in the chair across from his desk and crossing her legs. Someone in her lecture that day legitimately thought Shakespeare was actually Elizabeth I.

 

Gold looks up from his computer, leans back in the leather desk chair Regina covets and folds his arms across his chest. “Miss Mills, I don’t say this often but, suck it up.”

 

“I’m sorry. What?”

 

Gold lets out a breath. “I advised you to complete your pre-twentieth century requirement early on. You didn’t listen. It was that or an advanced old English paper. Everything else is full.”

 

She scowls but Gold is one of the few people in her life who isn’t intimidated by her. “Fine,” she says and stomps out, accidentally-on-purpose knocking a pile of papers off a side table as she does so.

 

“I appreciate your mature response to your academic career,” Gold calls after her.

 

She turns up to class the next day in extremely poor humour, which is not helped by the fact that the male interpreter is starting off today’s lesson. As Dr Hopper starts discussing ‘Macbeth’, she watches the blonde interpreter, who’s reading through a series of papers she assumes is the lecture. As she does so, her right hand moves minutely, as though reminding herself of the signs.

 

Regina finds herself drawn to the movements of the girl’s hands throughout the lecture when she swaps out with her partner. He’s more naturally animated than her, his gestures more flamboyant, his face more expressive. But there’s a beauty in her hands, her fingers long and unadorned, but for chipped green nail polish. Her skin is pale, too pale really and Regina wonders if her hands get chapped in the chill of winter because there’s a redness around the fingers.

 

She looks up and realises that the girl is staring directly at her and Regina realises she’s been watching the girl’s hands for, like, ten minutes and she doesn’t understand sign language. She feels her face grow warm and she’s grateful that she doesn’t blush.

 

It keeps happening. She keeps zoning out and staring at the girl’s hands as they twist and move in a language she cannot comprehend.

 

Marian laughs when she finally confesses it to her, while they fold laundry in the laundry room of their apartment building. “I wondered why you’d stopped bitching about your Shakespeare course,” she said. “You’re in lust with a pair of hands.”

 

“No,” Regina says and then mumbles, “the rest of her is pretty hot as well.”

 

“Ask her out,” Marian says. And it’s alright for her because Marian’s always been the confident, extroverted one, the one who’ll introduce herself to anyone. Regina creates a false sense of confidence by imagining herself above others but when actually forced to talk to people she’s a mess.

 

“I don’t know her name,” Regina says.

 

“Well, if you ask her out, I’m sure you’ll find it out at some point before you fuck her,” she says and Regina throws a set of socks she’s just paired at her. Marian just shrugs and pulls them on over her bare feet and that’s just great because Marian’s a sock thief and she’ll never get them back now.

 

*

 

As part of her ongoing ‘Help Regina Get Over Her High School Boyfriend’ campaign (which has been unsuccessful for four years because Marian keeps stealing the boys Regina might actually find attractive and has the most terrible taste in girls imaginable, even considering that she’s straight), Marian drags her to a party. It’s loud and the music is _terrible_ and these awful frat boys keep hitting on her and Marian disappeared, like, an hour ago with this boy she’s been seeing on her archery team and Regina’s not going looking for her because last time she did she walked in on them fucking in some stranger’s bedroom.

 

Then, she feels an arm around her waist and soft breath on her neck. “Hey there, Lady Macbeth.”

 

She whirls around, ready to punch or hurl insults or generally wreak some havoc, only to find the sign language interpreter. Her hair is loose and mussed and her cheeks are red. “What?” and it comes out rather more snappish than she’d like.

 

“Because you glare at poor old Dr Hopper all ‘unsex me now’ as though you’re plotting his death and the hostile takeover of his class,” the girl says. “Except when you’re ogling my hands. I do have better features, you know.” She grins and it’s alarming how charming Regina finds it.

 

“I’ve been called worse,” she says. And it’s true; when she was student council president in her senior year, her constituents took to calling her the Evil Queen.

 

“Hey, for the hours of entertainment I’ve provided you, can you do me a favour?” She’s yelling over the music.

 

“Depends on the favour,” Regina says and the girl grins again.

 

“Okay, here’s the thing,” she says but she’s interrupted by the other interpreter, wrapping an arm around her interpreter’s neck (and it’s not like she’s possessive or anything).

 

“Swan, you’ve been avoiding me,” he says.

 

“Killian, for the last time, I’m a lesbian,” the girl (Swan?) says. “This is my girlfriend,” she adds and wraps one of her beautiful hands into Regina’s.

 

Regina starts, shaking her head for a moment. So they’re playing at a fake relationship. She can manage this as a favour. “Yeah,” she says incredibly unconvincingly. “Her girlfriend.” She clasps the hand tighter and leans against Swan’s body, feeling the tension in Swan’s shoulders ease.

 

Killian looks dubiously between the two of them and then grins. “Hot. Mind giving me a show?”

 

“You’re disgusting,” Swan says, lip curling.

 

Killian’s about to say something more but cries of “Fight!” come from the front of the house and he goes running, nearly tripping in his haste to be first to the fray.

 

“Sorry,” Swan says. “He’s more respectful of boundaries when he’s sober.” She loosens her grip on Regina’s hand and Regina feels the loss.

 

“Anything I can do to help,” Regina says, shrugging. “So…”

 

“I’m not actually a lesbian,” Swan says. “But I figured saying I was bi wasn’t going to put him off hitting on me and we have to work together for the rest of the semester.”

 

“My mother’s the mayor,” Regina says. “I could have him assassinated.” She doesn’t know what’s got into her. She never mentions her mother. Her mother probably does have killers for hire – she’s kind of terrifying like that – but Regina has successful avoided talking to her for three years and asking her mother to arrange an assassination is not how she wanted their relationship to be re-started.

 

Swan laughs. “I’ll keep it in mind if he starts getting handsy. I’m Emma, by the way.”

 

“Regina Mills,” she says, holding out a hand. “Otherwise known as Lady Macbeth apparently.” Emma takes her hand for the second time in one evening and shakes it, laughing as she does so.

 

*

 

Regina keeps watching Emma while she signs, though she attempts to be slightly more covert about it. She’s not especially successful, judging by the winks occasionally thrown her way. So the weeks pass and Marian keeps bugging Regina to go and talk to her again. “Stop running away from happiness,” she says. “Or at least a good lay.”

 

But Emma’s always talking to the guy who is funded for sign language interpreters at the end of the lectures and Regina doesn’t want to disrupt. At least that’s what she tells herself.

 

They’re studying ‘Measure for Measure’ now, moderately more interesting to Regina since she’s not actually read it before now and she has to admit there might be some positives to Dr Hopper’s lectures. They’re looking at Angelo and Isabella’s interactions that day.

 

“Angelo’s coercion,” Dr Hopper says, “is not too different from the sorts of things we see today. Men in power raping women and telling them no one will believe them if they tell anyone.” He lists cases of sexual harassment and rape that put women in terrible positions.

 

Regina looks over at Emma and notices her movements have become jerky and erratic, the usual flow of language from her fingers seems to be stuttering. Is Dr Hopper going off script? Killian, it seems, has noticed as well and he stands, tapping Emma on the arm and starting to sign himself.

 

Emma wrings her hands and then walks out. Regina sits for a moment, frozen, before following her. She spots a flash of blonde hair going into a nearby bathroom.

 

“Emma?” she calls, her voice echoing through the bathroom. She hears the breathing, too quick, the gulps of sobs, and she suspects she’s having a panic attack. She was susceptible to them at high school, the pressure from home for her to achieve perfection proving too much sometimes. She’s been much better since she moved out and, depressingly, since Papi died and she’s seen no reason to visit the Mifflin Street mansion anymore. “It’s Regina. I’m out here when you’re ready.”

 

She perches on the counter. Someone comes in to use the bathroom and she glares at them until they leave.

 

Eventually the lock turns and Emma exits. She’s pulled her hair back into a knot at the base of her neck and her eyes are red. She turns on a tap and splashes water on her face, droplets falling to stain the neckline of her blue sweater. Regina watches her, watches those hands twitch and fidget and fall to clasp the side of the sink in a white-tight grip.

 

“Want to talk?” she asks.

 

“Not really,” Emma says, shrugging. “Just… Dr Hopper went off script. Wasn’t expecting that.”

 

“If it helps any,” Regina says. “He’s an idiot.”

 

“He’s really not,” Emma says and there’s heat in her words. “Did you know the university won’t pay the money required to hire professional interpreters? Killian’s taking deaf studies and I learned ASL when I was a kid and the pay’s slightly better than working in a bar. Dr Hopper’s the only lecturer I’ve worked with who gives us his lectures ahead of time. The others are all too precious, like their lectures are these gifts to be handled with care.”

 

“Sorry,” Regina replies. She hates apologising so it comes out surlier than she would like.

 

“S’okay,” Emma says gruffly and Regina suspects she hates acknowledging apologies as much as Regina hates apologising.

 

Regina keeps Emma’s rant in mind when they return to class, as the lecture has finished and Dr Hopper is packing up. “I’m sorry, Emma,” he says, his whole face crumpling.

 

“I’m fine,” she says, shrugging. “You’re okay, Doc.”

 

Dr Hopper smiles and turns to Regina. “Thank you for checking on her, Ms Mills.”

 

“Don’t go off script again,” Regina says because her good intentions lasted all of thirty seconds. Emma snorts out a laugh as Dr Hopper blushes scarlet.

 

*

 

After the next lecture, Regina gets up the courage to go up to Emma after class. She’s shoving papers into her bag. “How are you going?” she asks.

 

Emma turns and beams. “Really good,” she says. “Hey, let me shout you a coffee.”

 

“I’ve got another class in an hour,” Regina says. She was going to study in the library. She’s dangerously behind on her reading for The Great American Novel (all written by white dudes and a curriculum that thinks Jack Kerouac is a great and not, like, Alice Walker or Toni Morrison is not a curriculum she’s all that interested in – but it’s too late to pull out without ruining her GPA with a failing grade).

 

“I like that you think I could handle your company for more than an hour,” Emma says but she smiles as she says it and then eyes Regina anxiously as though worried she won’t realise it was a joke.

 

“Okay,” Regina says, pulling a face.

 

“That’s a cute look,” Emma says and Regina frowns. “The scrunchy face,” she says.

 

“I thought you were going to buy me coffee, not insult me,” Regina says and Emma laughs.

 

“Keen all of a sudden, aren’t we?” she says and they wander over to the campus café where Emma insists on buying coffee. “You’ve done me two favours now.”

 

Sitting by the window, Regina watches Emma’s hands as she rips open three sugar sachets and pours them into her coffee. She notices Regina staring. “Am I ruining coffee for you?” she asks. “My ex used to moan incessantly about how I took my coffee. He was a real coffee snob.”

 

“I fail to see how you using a disgusting amount of sugar in your coffee would ruin mine,” Regina says.

 

“So,” Emma says. “What’s your deal? You can’t be a sophomore.”

 

“Can’t I?” Regina raises an eyebrow and Emma backtracks.

 

“I mean, not that you look old… Just, like, mature. And you were at a party hosted by seniors.”

 

“I have to take this class to meet my degree requirements,” she says. “I’ve already done higher level Shakespeare.”

 

“Which explains the sneer every time someone asks a question,” Emma says and Regina wonders for a moment if Emma’s been watching her as much as she’s been watching Emma before dismissing it as ridiculous. “My advice? Don’t be a teacher.” Regina scowls. “Yeah, that’s the look,” Emma says.

 

“I don’t enjoy being mocked,” Regina says stiffly.

 

Emma shrugs. “Sorry,” she says. “So, you have a fiancé?” She’s looking at the ring.

 

Regina twists the silver band, set with a diamond. “No,” she says. “Not anymore.”

 

“But you kept the ring?” Emma raises her eyebrows.

 

“He was my high school boyfriend,” she says. “He died.” She remembers the black ice, the car skidding. She’d survived, just the scar on her lip and some bruising and scarring on her arms and stomach. Daniel hadn’t been so lucky.

 

Emma reaches a hand across the table and places it over Regina’s. The warmth emanating from Emma’s hands is astonishing and Regina meets her eyes and for the first time ever she doesn’t feel pitied after telling Daniel’s story and it’s refreshing.

 

*

 

They keep meeting for coffee after class and the tentative friendship blossoms. Regina learns that Emma has a sweet tooth and that she grew up in foster care and that she’s deferred the completion of her degree because her funding got cut. “I’ll get there one day,” she says, shrugging, when Regina expresses outrage.

 

And Regina tells her stuff, stuff that even Marian doesn’t know. Stuff about her mother and the one night stand she had with the Asian American Writing teaching assistant last semester and her hopes for marriage and children with Daniel. “It’s one of those stupid engaged-to-be-engaged rings,” she says. “But we were going to get married when I graduated from law school. He was going to work for his dad, save up for a down payment on a house. And then he’d take over the business and I’d work for the law firm in Storybrooke and we’d have kids really young. I wanted boys.”

 

And then Marian ruins it by showing up at the café. “Ladies,” she says, sliding into the third seat at the table and holding out a hand for Emma to shake. “Hi, I’m Marian. Regina’s soul mate.”

 

“She means worst nightmare,” Regina says, glaring at her roommate.

 

“So,” Marian says, grinning. “You’re Emma. Regina’s told me _all_ about you.”

 

“Has she now?” Emma says and she’s grinning as well and it’s unnerving to see her best friend and the girl she loves staring at her with terrifyingly identical smiles.

 

Wait, loves?

 

“I have to go,” Regina says, leaping up. “I forgot to print a thing.”

 

“Specific,” Marian says, though her eyes say, _you are a terrible liar_. “That’s all right. Emma and I can _chat_.”

 

Regina runs out of the café and spends half an hour in the library before her next class, staring blankly at the cover of ‘American Psycho’. After class, she returns home and finds Marian watching some telenovella and highlighting her biomed course notes. “She’s cute,” she says. “I approve.”

 

“There’s nothing to approve of,” Regina snaps.

 

“Oh, lady’s got backbone,” Marian says. “I like it.”

 

“I only mean,” Regina says, “that we’re friends.”

 

“Friends who want to do each other,” Marian says. “Come on, Regina. You really need to get laid.”

 

Sometimes Regina’s envious of Marian’s easy approach to sex and sexuality. Regina’s only ever slept with two people; Daniel and Mulan, the teaching assistant – which had only happened because she was tired of feeling abnormal for holding on to Daniel and Mulan had been equally suitably uninterested in commitment beyond a few orgasms. “I don’t comment on your proclivities. I wish you’d stop making fun of me for mine.”

 

“Sorry, lovely,” Marian says, the apology rolling easily off the tongue. “You know I’m teasing, right? If you want that Emma girl though you should go for it. Think about what someone with that dexterity with her hands could do…” She sighs. “It might be enough to turn me.”

 

“Marian, you’re the straightest person I know,” Regina says.

 

“Tragic, isn’t it?” she says. “All of this,” and she gestures at her body, “lost to women.”

 

“I don’t know how we’ll all cope,” Regina says, rolling her eyes. “Don’t you have class, like, now?”

 

Marian looks at her phone, swears and runs out the door, taking a moment to clasp Regina’s shoulder for a moment. “You deserve happiness,” she says. “Don’t cut yourself off from it.”

 

*

 

Regina doesn’t go to class the next day. It’s dismal weather out and she can’t face Emma because she’s pretty sure Marian’s told her that Regina likes her and, even though the truth is so much more embarrassing, the idea of losing Emma’s friendship because of Regina’s inability to keep her stupid feelings in check is not worth thinking about.

 

She’s just stepped out of the shower when there’s a knock at the door and, grumbling she wraps a towelling robe around herself and answers it.

 

It’s Emma. “Hi,” she says, that altogether too hopeful smile playing at the corners of her lips. Regina’s suddenly very aware of the fact that she’s not wearing anything under her robe, of her nipples stiffening to little peaks beneath the thick towelling. “You weren’t in class. I was worried.”

 

Regina melts. “You’re all wet,” she says because it’s raining out and Emma’s hair is damp and scraggly and there are raindrops on her faux-leather jacket.

 

Emma shrugs. “I’m fine.”

 

“Come in.” Regina grabs her a towel, drags her out of the jacket and sits her down beside the heater. “Can I get you a drink?” she asks.

 

“No thanks,” Emma says. Her hands lie in her lap and she’s looking around, noticing Marian’s clutter (course notes, piles of laundry she refuses to move into her own bedroom, half empty bottles of water) and Regina’s bookshelves, overstuffed with books.

 

Regina sits next to her on the couch, crosses her legs, realises that this splits the robe so she’s now showing an alarming amount of skin, and uncrosses. “How was class?”

 

“Look,” Emma says. “I’ve got a question.” She pauses and Regina raises an eyebrow. But Emma’s looking at Regina’s hands and she reaches out and grabs them, her thumbs caressing her knuckles.

 

And so Regina does something Marian will be incredibly proud of if she ever tells her (when, because let’s be honest, Regina can’t keep anything from Marian for any period of time). She breaches the distance between them and kisses Emma.

 

Emma responds and it’s everything, soft and sweet and Emma sighs into her mouth like she’s been wanting to do this for a really long time. “How are you so perfect?” Emma asks when they break apart.

 

“Is that your question?” Regina asks, letting her fingers drift along Emma’s arms, which are all muscle and velvety skin and she thinks they might fascinate her as much as the hands but then all of Emma fascinates her really.

 

“Actually,” Emma says, “my question was this.” And she kisses Regina back. This kiss is rougher, firmer, and Emma’s body presses into hers and she lets herself fall back against the couch, because the feel of Emma’s form across hers is too intoxicating to be denied. Emma breaks off the kiss and laughs. “I was going to be cool,” she says. “I was going to ask you out on a date. I wasn’t going to just jump you.”

 

“Yes,” Regina says.

 

“What?”

 

“Yes, I’ll go on a date,” she says. “But for now, please, can we take this somewhere where Marian’s less liable to walk in.”

 

Emma’s looking at her like she’s a goddess and, to be honest, she feels pretty amazing as she drags Emma to her bedroom and, without giving herself time to pause or consider, takes off the robe.

 

She hasn’t had time to straighten her hair so it’s damp and frizzing around her shoulders and she’s not wearing any make-up and somehow it’s the sexiest she’s felt since she was seventeen and Daniel helped her out of her prom dress. Emma just stands there, staring, and Regina laughs. “I… wow,” Emma says.

 

“Want to show me what those hands can do?” Regina asks and this spurs Emma into action and it only takes a moment before Emma’s down to her underwear and she pressing kisses to Regina’s neck and breasts and her fingers are wandering down Regina’s body tantalisingly slowly and Regina swears. “Fuck, Swan,” she hisses because she’s got goose bumps and every hair on her body is on end and she feels like she’s going to explode and she didn’t know she could feel like that from someone touching her fucking hipbone.

 

“Instruction or just cursing me out?” Emma asks, grinning.

 

“Both, I think,” Regina admits and Emma laughs and quests lower until her hands reach the juncture of her thighs and Regina clenches instinctively.

 

“God, you’re wet,” Emma says, brushing a finger through the wetness, avoiding her clit. And the pressure builds with the slow circles her fingers make and her other hand continues to ghost Regina’s skin, finding the ticklish patch behind her knee and making her jerk and giggle. “This okay?” Emma asks.

 

“Oh my God,” Regina breathes because Emma’s thumb is putting pressure on her clit and two fingers are slipping inside her and it’s too much and not enough all at the same time and she pulls Emma’s head down to hers and kisses her, sloppy and fierce and wanting.

 

She completely falls apart when she comes and it’s this visceral reaction where she starts crying because, God, it’s been so long and how is Emma so _right_? Emma lets her cry, winding herself around Regina’s body and stroking her hair and back. When Regina has calmed down, Emma says, “that bad, huh?” and Regina laughs and kisses her and tastes the salt from her tears.

 

“You’re the worst,” she says. “How dare you make me feel so wonderful?”

 

“Special talent,” Emma says, smiling lazily at Regina. “God you’re lippy.”

 

“Well,” Regina says and, without warning, clambers on top of Emma. “You’re good with your hands. I can show you how good I am with my mouth.”

 

“Don’t let me stop you,” Emma says and then Regina’s mouth is on her, nipping and sucking at her neck, kissing down her body, making Emma keen with need.

 

*

 

Of course, Marian comes home, slamming the door to the apartment as Regina, and her tongue, are about to give Emma her third orgasm. “Regina?” Marian calls out and Emma’s whole body stiffens as Regina’s tongue flicks her over-sensitive clit. She lets out a strangled moan and Regina’s hand claws at Emma’s thigh, leaving white pressure marks in her skin, trying to tell her to stay quiet because she doesn’t want to stop.

 

The pressure builds and Regina’s got a hand between her own legs, rubbing herself furiously as she eats Emma out and Emma comes just as Marian bursts through the bedroom door, notices the scene playing out on the bed and starts cackling, having to support herself against the door frame.

 

“Fuck,” Regina says, scrambling to pull the covers up. “Get out, Marian!”

 

But Marian sits down at the end of the bed, still laughing. “So,” she says. “This is what Regina Mills does when I’m not home. Sorry for ever saying you were square.”

 

“This is not the time to be sitting down for a chat,” Regina says because, oh God, her roommate saw her with her face in between Emma’s thighs and a hand in between her legs and she’s never going to stop being embarrassed about that.

 

“This is payback,” Marian says.

 

“For walking in on you and Rob?” Regina asks. “I didn’t stay for a cosy chat. Should I make tea? Scones?”

 

“That’d be great, yeah,” Marian replies. “So Emma. Regina any good in bed?”

 

Emma’s lying back against the pillows, shoulders shaking in silent laughter, and Regina buries her face against Emma’s collarbone because maybe if she can’t see Marian she’ll go away. “A lady never kisses and tells,” she says.

 

“Spoil sport,” Marian grumbles. “Right, I think I’ve embarrassed Regina enough. I’m making empanadas when you need sustenance.” And she leaves.

 

“I’m so sorry,” Regina mumbles against the sticky skin of Emma’s shoulder. “She’s the worst.”

 

“Just so you know,” Emma says and she curls her fingers through Regina’s hair. “You were amazing. And I still want that date.”

 

*

 

She’s at peace with going to her Introduction to Shakespeare lectures now, even though they’re currently covering on ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and she can’t believe there’s anyone who didn’t study that play in, like, their freshman year of high school.

 

She’s at peace with going because she gets to stare at the really cute sign language interpreter at the front of the room who’s wearing a tank top in the frigid lecture theatre because she knows Regina likes watching her arms almost as much as her hands.  

 

She’s at peace with it because when the really cute sign language interpreter takes her breaks, she writes little notes.

 

_Looking good in that dress._

_Lady Macbeth’s got nothing on you – style-wise and murder-wise._

_Stop scowling at Dr Hopper. You look cute when you scowl though._

_Miss kissing your stupid scrunchy face._

And when the lectures are through they go and get coffee and Emma teaches her sign language. “It’s the language of luuurve,” she says.

 

Regina snorts. “No, dear, that’s Spanish.”

 

So Emma signs the letters I, L and Y together, and Regina thinks she just might be swayed to Emma’s argument.

**Author's Note:**

> Always nervous about writing a Regina POV.  
> I hope you enjoy the unrepentant fluff :)


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